As small businesses grow, there is a natural tendency for the owner manager to try and control the business. Rules and regulations are invented and implemented in a bid to put foundations in place. However, it’s very easy for these to get too complex and wrap people up in knots.

When the company becomes a growing bureaucracy, it presents huge barriers to innovative ideas, creative thinking and, often dampens the original buzz the company had. Introducing a research and development budget often won’t help either. That’s why we often see small business growth plateau after a number of growth years.

It’s at a time like this that the owner/leader of the small business needs to reinforce their commitment to innovation and exciting ideas. It’s their job to remove the barriers that are starting to creep into daily life at the office or factory. It’s the owner’s role to prioritise and give preference to the people with the ideas internally in the business, creating a sense of innovation, openness to new ideas and an environment of product/service development particularly as new ideas are often very fragile.

Great owners at this time do two things:

1.     They stay close to the people in his/her business who are the innovators that create the organic growth. Protecting them from unnecessary rules and pessimism.

2.     They are out in the market place continually looking for new ideas others have created. Bringing them back to the company to develop further.

If you can link these two together, you could experience sustained growth for years. Leaders inspire. It’s not necessarily the owner’s responsibility to come up with the new ideas anymore but it is their responsibility to create a culture that allows them to be nurtured and ultimately grow.

Thought provoking when it comes to your marketing strategy and budget!!!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/technology/internet/18drill.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

You own your attitude. You can get up on a morning and decide to have a crap day or a good one no matter what the weather or the expected trials of the day! There is always a choice about how you approach the days work and, as a small business owner, you always have a choice about the work itself!

Your attitude can take you to many places. Lets be frank, some days management of your attitude takes a lot more effort. Essentially at one end of the continuum it can mean darkness. Grumpy, snappy, despondence, low motivation, even mundaneness, which in turn, can lead you and your business to being just ordinary.

At the other end it can lead to high levels of motivation, drive, energy, enthusiasm, excitement, fun and, dare I say, enjoyment. Above all else it can lead to something extraordinary. The bottom line, is you do have a choice. I know which person I’m going to find more interesting, inspiring and possibly buy something from!

Putting aside Starbucks current cost cutting strategy, they do offer an example of how to enter a highly competitive market place and change the rules forever. Apart from the fact that, at the time, it could have been considered downright stupid or extremely brave. Perhaps when we look at our own business, we could learn a thing or two from Howard Shultz and his team.

Starbucks didn’t invent coffee, they just created a new way for us to experience it, especially us Brits. We had been confined to coffee shops full of ‘Nescafe,’ tea cosy’s and a doily! Not only that but this ‘new way’ charged us twice the price and made us queue longer.

That said, what Starbucks did right from the outset was deliberately create a difference that would immediately seperate Starbucks from the rest of the crowd. They plotted their customer experience process carefully and then very cleverly crafted, through design, a thoroughly differentiated and better experience.

Starbucks identified ways of doing things so different than what had been before. They called their coffee sizes alternatives names. They put sofas in their stores that encouraged you to stay. They sold peripherals and tapped into the emotions of their customers. And, of course, it worked.

How could they charge more than Dunkin Donuts, Mc Donalds and Hilda’s Cafe around the corner who were cheaper by a signifcant margin? Well they opened up a new price anchor that we accepted because of the experience. Just because it was so different and because it was so emotional.

Creating a new experience anchor in your market place, could help you create a new, more profitable price anchor!

Spot on again Seth. Go and buy the book too, it’s worth every penny.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead.html

It’s about getting the basics right before you try something different. There is no point in standing out from the crowd if your customers’ basic expectations are not being met.

A hotel room needs to be spotless, have fluffy towels and a hairdryer. A restaurant has to have a great menu including several vegetarian options, fabulous food and clean toilets. A mobile phone needs to be able to make telephone calls before it can download games. A car needs an engine, steering wheel and lots more before it can have all the fancy stuff that we all desire. You get the picture.

In designing the customer experience, plot the process first. Identify all the basic needs you critically have to get right. Once thats done, embedded in you and your employees everyday life, then go and create differentiation but not before that.

Take a look at this 3 minute animation. Thought you all would like it. It’s great….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc0ggyHcQBk

If you are waking up in the night thinking about how your website/blog should be working more for you, take a look at the conference below. It’s worth the effort of a visit to start the juices flowing and gain a little insight in what is and will happen in the future.

That goes for all of you dreaming of words like blog, Twitter, social networking, podcasts, online optimisation, link building etc. I know I’m not the only one!!!

http://www.onlinemarketingshow.co.uk

Change your thinking, your perspective and working day;

1. Phone three customers per day over the next two weeks.

2. Go away for a five days on your own. Take a laptop and do some research, set up a blog, understand social media, consider the future.

3. Hold your weekly meeting with your staff in a cafe, hotel or field.

4. Write five articles and post them on your website and online instead of creating the next corporate brochure.

5. Instead of creating a new product or service, invent new ways of getting 15% more business out of your existing customers.

6. Go and have a chat with a competitor. Have coffee, see what they are up to. There may be an opportunity.

7. If you are struggling to solve a problem, go stand on your head. The blood rush might help!

8. Think about creating a blog not a website.

9. Let your staff make all the decisions.

10. Go and see a top live performer (music, comedy, theatre) and then work out why they have been successful. Try and incorporate some of those things into you and your business.

In business, distance does not make the heart grow fonder. Go and phone your top five customers as soon as possible and ask them what they are up to!